Dana's sense of strategy seems to be getting tone deaf.

Total Buzz at the OC Register had an entry about Dana and Sarah Palin. I find it worth quoting.

“We remember all the negative things they said about somebody else,” Rohrabacher said to the crowd at the Palin rally in Carson. “His name was Ronald Reagan. I can guarantee that the same way Ronald Reagan saved America in 1982, Sarah Palin and John McCain will save America when they get to the White House.”

I think that it is time for Dana to go have his hearing checked. Sarah Palin is to Ronald Reagan as high school garage band is to the Rolling Stones.

In fact, if Dana is lining up to join in this game of trivial pursuit, then he is compounding his problem. While Reagan may be a hero, every single person who watched the interview with Gibson or Couric and saw her performance in the debate with Biden must know by now just what she lacks. Here is a link to what serious media in the UK said about her. The piece is headlined "Flirting Her Way to Victory".

Sarah Palin's farcical debate performance lowered the standards for both female candidates and US political discourse.

That was the kind part...

Evidently, Palin's pre-debate handlers judged her incapable of speaking on a fairly wide range of subjects, and so instructed to her to simply disregard questions that did not invite memorised talking points or cutesy filibustering. They probably told her to play up her spunky average-ness, which she did to the point of shtick - and dishonesty.

Dana, you have to show us better judgment than this. Or, if your ear is really that tone deaf, then I would guess the the Libertarian Troubadour sang off key as well.

Maybe Palin can win over all the Joe Sixpacks who will tell their wives to stay at home, keep their mouths shut and let him do the voting for the family. That is not the way to run a campaign when your opponent is an articulate woman with more experience in field of energy than Palin. You know, I have another idea. Why don't you have Palin come down and debated Debbie Cook on Energy Policy. That should be good for a few laughs.

Up to his old tricks

One of Dana Rohrbacher's favorite tricks is to say or do something so outrageous that totally undercuts any rational discussion of issues in this election. In fact, some of them seem to be designed to prevent Debbie Cook from getting any press mention at all.

I noted this before when everyone was talking about the rising prices of oil, Dana makes a big stink about a science fiction scenario of the world being hit by an asteroid. I keep wondering if he got a campaign contribution from Bruce Willis for this.

The most recent is his dragging up Sirhan Sirhan again. This was best reported by the Pasadena Weekly. but liberal bloggers have had a field day with it.

How dumb to you think we all are, Dana?

The OC Register ran a story on the assignation of Robert F. Kennedy and never mentioned your name. You probably never go over that, did you.

Now, you say you want to get Sirhan Sirhan to explain himself to help bring closure to the Kennedy's. That is another exceedingly callous way of trying to get Democrats to vote for you. I have news for you, Dana. They are not that dumb or they would be Republicans.

As Cook appears to be doing better and better, what additional attention getting trick do you have up your sleeve?

Dana Rohrabacher vs. Shell Oil

We all know where Crazy Dana stands on the question of Global Warming. One can only ask "why?"

In an interview with Charlie Rose this week, James Hofmeister, President of Shell Oil Company, made the point that "the debate is over." If even the president of one of our largest petroleum companies can make that statement, you wonder why the likes of Sen. Inhofe(R - OK) and Dana continue to chant the mantra of denial.
What to they have to gain?

While I don't agree with all of what Hofmeister said, especially about where we need to go in the future, there are two points that become clear... especially if you listen to the entire interview. The first is that Hofmeister is not talking from his personal viewpoint. Under questioning from Charlie, he made it clear that his statements are completely in line with the positions of the Board of Royal Dutch Shell (the parent company) and it's CEO, Jeroen van der Veer.

Hofmeister went on to explain that the only thing accomplished by such denial is to delay arriving at the solutions we will ultimately be forced to accept. We will all have to pay the costs of such delay, both in terms of the implementation of new solutions and in terms of the mitigation of the effects of global warming that could, possibly, have been prevented by prompt action now.

The only thing that I can see is that Dana thinks he benefits at the polls by continuing this charade, that the voters have been sold this crap for so long that they think it smells sweet, that they are the ones who know better in the face of this "vast left wind conspiracy".

What they will find is that those like Dana and Senator Inhofe have been selling snake oil and the sickness is getting worse. Of course, when we could have stayed at home and taken an over-the-counter remedy, now, because of people like Dana who have abused their access to the media, we may need major, expensive surgery.

Soldiers of MisFortune

The NY Times ran this story. I wonder is the OC Register will touch it.

January 10, 2008

2005 Use of Gas by Blackwater Leaves Questions
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The helicopter was hovering over a Baghdad checkpoint into the Green Zone, one typically crowded with cars, Iraqi civilians and United States military personnel.

Suddenly, on that May day in 2005, the copter dropped CS gas, a riot-control substance the American military in Iraq can use only under the strictest conditions and with the approval of top military commanders. An armored vehicle on the ground also released the gas, temporarily blinding drivers, passers-by and at least 10 American soldiers operating the checkpoint.

You can read the rest of it at the Times. Not only did this group of renegade Rombo wannabes get upset at Iraqi's for clogging up an intersection and casually killed 17, now they start on our own troops. We hear all about supporting the troops. Does this me to gas them?

I would guess that the OC Register owes too much to Dana Rohrabacher to even mention the story. Just because Blackwater's CEO Erik Prince used to be an aide to Rohrabacher should not make these gun happy goons immune.

It is time to shut them down and to retire those who support them. Otherwise, we might begin to think that the OC Register is a bunch of hypocrites, talking about supporting out troops and then dropping the ball when our hired hands screw up. That is OK. Keep your public in the dark. We will continue to shine the light of truth on this until the Dept. of Defense decides to fire Blackwater. Then we will fire Rohrabacher.

Earmarks again?

We have to give Dana high marks for perseverance and loyalty to friends like Duncan Hunter. Sadly, we once again have to give him low marks for his understanding of science or even for his adherence to the great Republican Virtue of controlling government spending.

The case in point is a sci-fi aircraft from Dupont Aerospace. In the last 19+ years the DP-2, a VTOL jet rumored to be able to fly a squad of soldiers and a humvee some 5000 miles at 700 miles per hours. So far, after burning through some $63 million in earmarked spending for friends of Hunter and Rohrabacher, the plane has yet to be able to get more than a couple of feet off the ground before coming back down "hard".

John Eney is an aerospace engineer who headed up the aircraft conceptual design group at the Naval Air Development Center Naval Air Systems Command. He led an onsite review of the DP-2 program in 1999.

"It's a pipe dream," he said.

In order to have the promised VTOL capabilities, the aircraft directs jet exhaust toward the ground. Eney says this would incinerate troops rappelling out of the aircraft.

Hunter "failed to understand the basic physics of this situation," he said.

So, where is the 46th free thinking Congressman in all of this?

California Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican member of the House Science and Technology Committee, hailed duPont president Tony duPont as "a respected engineer" and "a maverick."

"When we come to the point where we don't (give) mavericks and free thinkers the chance to prove their theories, we're putting a great limitation on what our potential is for the future," said Rohrabacher.

Well, I guess Dana doesn't need to understand physics to be a Congressman. But, he should surely be smart enough to hire some staff who can research a problem and get him the facts. Mission Failed. This is about as bright as his dinosaur flatulence remarks regarding global warming.

If Dana wants to be known as a real free thinking radical standing up for what is right, maybe he should start by insisting the any project he supports has some basis in sound science before spending another $63 Million on a project that the military doesn't even want.

Is this being a good Republican? Is this being a good, don't like government waste Libertarian? Sorry, I forgot. Dana quit being a Libertarian when he got a real job as a speech writer. In any case, it isn't like he is doing what even the Republicans in his district say they want.

The best thing that the Republicans could do to keep this district is to find someone else to run, someone who practices what Republicans preach. Let Dana stay at home and play with the triplets. He can't do as much harm there.

Once in a while, Dana gets it right.

In the interest of being fair, I should remind everyone that even Rohrabacher is right on occasion. This time, he directed his stings at General Alberto Gonzales. According to a March 16 story from Attorney The Hill...

There’s been a pattern of arrogance in this Administration,” Rohrabacher said. “They’ve demonstrated contempt for Congressional oversight and now we see a misuse of FBI authority, heavy-handed firings of U.S. Attorneys along with the ruthless prosecution of Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean.

Now that Congress is exercising that oversight, calling not only Gonzales to testify but also most of his immediate staff, even offering immunity to Monica Goodling, I wonder if Rohrabacher is willing to join the Republican chorus calling for Gonzales to resign, as he seemed to be hinting. It's time to find out if he is the independent free spirit he says he is.

When Green is in...

As someone who has tried to educate myself on the environment and on environmental issues since I was in school back in the 1950's, I find it amazing that members of Congress like Senenator James Inhofe (R. OK) and Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R. CA-46) continue to allow the words come out of their mouths that they do. Let me cite the latest quotation from Rohrabacher.

You know that there are hundreds of scientists who object to this. For example, Dr. Timothy Ball, a very respected man, "Believe it or not global warming is not due to human contribution of carbon dioxide. This is the greatest deception in science." The earth is getting a little warmer. Since 1850 there's been a 1 1/2 degree temperature rise. They don't mention that 1850 happened to be at the tail end of a 500 year decline in temperatures. Not something we should be concerned about. When Greenland was green, it was in fact a very wonderful time for the Earth, crops flourished, population expanded. In and of itself, temperature rise is not a problem. Just like the warming on Mars and other planets. Probably due to sunspots. That said, we need to do things aimed at energy and cleaning the air. We are now vulnerable to foreign potentates and terrorists who want to do us harm. Not because the air is any warmer than it was 300 years ago. Is there not a parallel direction here, for those of us interested in human health that draws us together, and that the global warming thing, we may not have to be in agreement here?

Such a statement could have been predicted with even more accuracy that we can predict tomorrow's weather.

What Rohrabacher does not tell us is that Dr. Timothy Ball is dependent on funding from Exxon-Mobil. I find that the full extent of this dependency has been documented pretty well by another blogger.

Closer to home, one of the 19 Canadian signatories to the skeptics letter is Tim Ball, a retired professor of climatology from the University of Winnipeg, now living in Victoria. As a global-warming sceptic, he is in high demand by the front groups sponsored by the fossil fuel industry.

Ball's particular niche is the argument that since 1940, the world's climate has actually been cooling. The conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, reached by over 2,000 climate scientists, that the world is heating up is wrong, he says, because it used "distorted records."

Undistorted records in hand, Ball is promoted by the National Center for Public Policy Research ($225,000 from Exxon Mobil), and Tech Central Station (which also receives support from General Motors). He's a hot topic on the Coalblog web site, sponsored by the coal companies. In the past year, he's given policy briefings to the Fraser Institute and the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg.

You could have found him and Baliunas at a conference in Ottawa in November 2002, just days before parliament ratified the Kyoto Protocol. That conference, urging the government not to proceed with ratification, was paid for by Imperial Oil (Exxon Mobil's Canadian subsidiary) and Talisman Energy and put together by public relations firm APCO Worldwide.

OK, if Dr. Ball is dependent on Exxon-Mobil, then maybe we should ask what we know about the company who makes huge profits out of our gas guzzling ways. To begin with, we have known for years that Exxon-Mobil has funded pseudo-science to protect their interests. Chris Mooney, a journalist reporting on Science, detailed this for Mother Jones.

Forty public policy groups have this in common: They seek to undermine the scientific consensus that humans are causing the earth to overheat. And they all get money from ExxonMobil.

Not one to drop the issue, Mooney has now authored a new book, Storm World, in which he documents the current understanding of the relationship between climate change and the rate, intensity and time of year appearance of tropical storms. Even today, he comments at Science Blogs about the out of season appearances of tropical storms Andrea (Atlantic) and Akash (N. Indian Ocean). The point is that Mooney is not just an average reporter doing an average job.

It would seem that Crazy Dana continues to mouth the old platitudes from the Exxon-Mobil playbook while everyone else has moved beyond that. If Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, understands climate change and is willing to spend money on being "green" you might wonder what Rohrabacher's constituency will now be hearing from their favorite news source. Even Exxon-Mobil is changing it's stance. Will Crazy Dana now be out of step with the rest of his constituency or will he continue to try and play with our minds?

A House Cleaning is in Order

I never seem to get around to reading the NY Times. Maybe I should. When a friend of mine sent me this link to an Adam Cohen editorial today, it made me stop and think a bit.

The House of Representatives has long been a place where the perks of a little bit of power seem to play to the worst impulses of greed people. The players change, even the parties involved change, but the story never does.

The overall cleanup of the House promised by Newt Gingrich never happened. The scandals that brought down Dan Rostenkowski and the House Democrats in the early 1990's are now the scandals that are playing havoc with the Republicans who stayed hanging around long after their idealist slogans were tarnished, turned green with money.

No where has that been more the case more than with the California House Republicans. For every person of principle there have been two made in the image of Duke Cunningham. For some reason, Southern California seems to be the spawning ground for this sort of graft and corruption. The first to fall was "Duke" Cunningham. Then, up in No Cal, the supposedly powerful Richard Pombo lost the CA 11 seat to a guy whom even the Bay Area House Democrats said "can't win."

The Republican Party needs to start asking itself just how far they will let the likes of Cunningham pull them down, as the winds of shame are swirling around Jerry Lewis, Gary Miller and Dana Rohrabacher, the self-styled Libertarian Troubadour and (later) Reagan speech-writer.

I ran across the following description of Rohrabacher's early career, laid out in a discussion of Totaliarianism Today.

The final step was provided by an anti-communist free-market anarchist named Dana Rohrabacher at the St. Louis YAF Convention. He was a charismatic campus activist, radicalized by Robert LeFevre who provided him with small funding to travel the country with his instrument and folk songs from campus to campus, converting YAF chapters into Libertarian Alliances and SIL chapters. Alas, later he fell into politics, but not the LP. The Libertarian billionaire Charles Koch supported him in two failed Republicans primary campaigns, and after Rohrabacher put in time as Ronald Reagan's speechwriter, he got his reward of a safe seat in the U.S. House of Representatives from Orange County. He is still in office today, with growing seniority. There are few issues on which he is still Libertarian, certainly fewer than, say, Ron Paul holds.

It looks more like the attraction of money eventually ate away at those Libertarian Values that he once held dear.

I wonder how many more reference to the old Rohrabacher, the one who lived his value (on other people's money) I can find and whether they will prove embarrassing to the new Rohrabacher. Or maybe the one we see is the one that was there all along and all that Libertarian stuff was just an act, a young man, a guitar and an act to take on the road. He surely seems to have come a long ways from the ideas of Robert LeFevre or the late Samuel Edward Konkin III.

I would guess that we should give Rohrabacher the benefit of the doubt. That at one time he really believe in what he was doing. But then, we have a good measure of just how long it take the power and money flowing through Washington to reach someone, to change the way that they look at the morality of the things they do. Only the very strong seem immune and I don't see that Rohrabacher is all that strong. Those two failed races for office as Libertarian spouting Republican must have taught him that to gain and keep, that power, you have to go along. So he went along to the Marianas Islands with Tom Delay.

Where else did he go along? We will keep the travelogue running.

Crazy Dana = Anti-Choice

Let's face it: Crazy Dana Rohrabacher is completely out of touch with us when it comes to women's reproductive rights. He simply doesn't accept a woman's right to choose.

Let's look at how Planned Parenthood rates Dana. They see him as 100% anti-choice. He opposes insurance coverage for contraceptives. He opposes confidential family planning services for minors. Actually, he opposes ANY access for family planning services.

So why should we care? We should care about this because Crazy Dana is more interested in scoring cheap political points than he is in ensuring that women's private medical decisions remain private, between a woman and her doctor. We should care because Dana would rather have Washington politicians meddle in women's health decisions than to allow a woman to choose what's best for her own health.

Crazy Dana talks the talk on fighting for individual rights, but he certainly doesn't walk the walk. He has consistently acted to prevent women from making their own decisions about their own bodies. I guess he just doesn't think that women know what's best for themselves. And no, I wouldn't call taking away a woman's right to choose "fighting for individual rights". I just call BS.

The Abramoff shoes keep dropping

One of the impacts of last falls elections was the fact that the Abramoff scandal contributed to the defeat of a number of Republican Congressmen, most notably Richard Pombo (CA-11) and almost resulted in the defeat of John Doolittle (CA-4). Another effect was the fact that the investigation into the affairs of Jack Abramoff became old news and is no longer being covered on the 11:00 news. There must be more than a few sighs of relief, even in Huntington Beach.

The investigation is still unfolding and for those paying attention it is like listening to a centipede undress. You keep waiting for another shoe to drop, which it does on an almost daily basis.

Recent developments in the Abramoff scandal This week, one time Congressional staffer, Mark Zachares made a guilty plea and agreed to assist prosecutors in peeling yet another layer off this rotten onion. According to a Bloomberg New story...

Court documents said Zachares used his post as staff director of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Coast Guard and Maritime subcommittee to help Abramoff land clients and obtain favorable congressional action. Zachares agreed to use his committee position to retaliate against companies that hired other lobbyists, the document said.

TPM has made the court filing available to all. From that we know that Zachares served as staff to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chaired by Alaska Congressman Donald Young. Zachares was identified by Abramoff while employed by the Attorney General's office in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands (CNMI).

The long sordid history of Abramoff and the Marianas has been very well documented by dengre on DailyKos. I don't intend to duplicate what he has done to connect the dots, most recently to Young. I do want to point out that Dana Rohrabacher is surely one of those who is listening carefully for each shoe drop.

We know that Rohrabacher visited the CNMI and met with officials there. He went along with Young, John Dootlittle.and others on a Abramoff sponsored trip to the CNMI in 1999. I am sure that Rohrabacher's memory of this trip will be about as good as Alberto Gonzales's memory of the more recent firing of Carol Lam (investigated and convicted Randy Cunningham and beginning an investigation of other Southern California Congressmen) or Arizona USDA John Charlton (beginning an investigation of Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi.)

There is an open question about Congressman Rohrabacher and whether he was just along for the ride going to a Pacific paradise and Libertarian Free Market success story, or that is what they wanted you to want to believe. That “free market success” was built on the exploitation of guest workers, women forced into prostitution and a system of sweatshops which benefited not the citizens of the CNMI, but Abramoff's Hong Kong based employers who had taken over the CNMI government.

How much did Rohrabacher know about what was really going on? Did he so want to believe that “free market success” that he turned a blind eye to corruption on which it was built? If that is so, then he is merely incompetent, because everyone else could see it. Or is there something deeper than that?

At that time, the Department of Justice was fully aware of the extent of corruption in the CNMI. The Associate Deputy Attorney General at the time (09/1999), Nicholas Gess testified as such to the House Committee on Resources.

Every day as we work to investigate and prosecute these cases, more criminals arrive on the CNMI. As we investigate to determine whether a recruiter who promised jobs to workers to get them to come to the CNMI committed fraud or is just a bad businessman, another group of cheated workers lands at the airport. As we seize a load of drugs brought in by members of the Japanese Yakuza or Chinese triad gangs, others are already on their way, ensured of easy access to the islands. As we put one gang member in jail, others arrive. In short, we are winning individual battles, but we may be losing the war.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the famed libertarian troubadour is singing a different tune. It is time that we give his vocal cords a rest.

As soon as the mechanisms are in place, we will be telling you how you can contribute to the defeat of Crazy Dana. In the meantime, there is a good chance to help retire Doolittle from California's congressional delegation. Charlie Brown is building a campaign fund to go after Doolittle one more time. Without the strong backing of the DCCC, he almost pulled it off last time, thanks greatly to way that the netroots got behind his candidacy. We can continue that by going to the Democracy For America site and voting for Charlie Brown as their "all star". That contest ends at midnight tonight. so don't put it off.

Then, we need to identify a new allstar to take on Crazy Dana.

Dana's been around a long time.

I just did not know how long until I ran across the following quote today.

“Why can't you see?
We just want to be free
To have our homes and families
And live our lives as we please.”

Dana Rohrabacher - West Coast Libertarian Troubadour (1973)

Nice sentiment, Dana. It has a lot of appeal to honest, hard working people who would like big government to leave them alone. It is also the appeal of those with other things to hide from view. Take Randy Cunningham, for example. I can just hear him telling Carol Lam the same words.

The real problem that I sense is that there are a lot of people who are just plain fed up with the fact that they are working the ass off, spending too much time on the freeways, too little time with their families and know that they are getting the shaft.

When the so called party of small government loads up its budgets with pork for every pet district project, bridges to nowhere, and blows away the balanced budgets that we had in 2000, then we know where to turn. This "leave me alone and let me do my own thing" may make a good sentiment for Kenny Chesney, but it doesn't make good policy in Washington.

Maybe, back then, he was just inhaling.

Rohrabacher to European Union Delegation

There are many Americans who question what we are so much hated around the world. Maybe, it is because people all over the world have met the likes of Dana Rohrabacher, Congressman with the big mouth. The latest flap that came from his flapping lips is this quote: "I HOPE IT'S YOUR FAMILY MEMBERS THAT DIE" The recipients of his diatribe? Members of the European Union Parliament. The embarrassment? Every American's.

The subject was that of extraordinary rendition. That is the practice where the US government has it's agents go to other countries, kidnap citizens off the street and take them to secret prisons in countries that have no laws against torture.

This time, there was someone around to note what he said and the story has been written up so very well by US Army Reserves Colonel (Retired) Ann Wright. She gives a very illuminating picture of what happened.

At that point, I had had enough of Rohrabacher. I stood up and said "I did not serve 29 years in the US military and 16 years in the US diplomatic corps to see demise of the rule of law and violation of our own laws. Rohrback’s statements are outrageous. No wonder the world hates us!"

Chairman Delahunt gaveled for me to stop speaking and I was escorted by the police out of the committee room. I was not arrested.

Remarkably, I do agree with one thing Rohrabacker said. "They hate us."

Rohrabacker finished his sentence with "They hate us because they hate our way of life." Unfortunately, many people do hate us, but it’s not for our way of life.

Its for exactly the talk and actions that Rohrabacker and the Bush administration represent: illegal and unlawful actions, an arrogant attitude that America is always right and everyone else is wrong, that the world’s resources are for the exclusive use of the United States and we have the right to invade and occupy any country.”

Ann Wright is no starry-eyed young college student, filled with the dreams of youth. She is a veteran and you don't rise to the rank of Colonel without understand what violence begets.

If there were ever a single incident that tells us we need to reject Rohrabacher and his crazy ideas, this is it. I would have stood up with Col. Wright. I spent my time in the service. (Did Dana?) My brother was in Korea and Vietnam and eventually died in a VA Hospital, Springfield, MO. Lt. Colonel Rolley would have stood up and saluted Col. Wright, and he was a Rush Limbaugh fan.

Doolittle's in Deep Doo-Doo... So When Will Dana's Time Come?

This just in from Roll Call:

The FBI has raided the Northern Virginia home of Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.), according to Congressional sources. No details are publicly available yet about the circumstances of the raid, but Doolittle and his wife, Julie, have been under federal investigation for their ties to the scandal surrounding imprisoned former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

So John Doolittle (R-Roseville) might finally be held accountable for all his dirty work...
Now when can we expect the same of Crazy Dana? Lordy knows his day in court is past due!

Mavericks and myths

The image of the maverick runs through the American consciousness. Originally a calf that had been separated from the herd, from its mother, and which, if they made it to adulthood were wild and unpredictable, being branded a maverick has become almost an endorsement for a politician. I use that turn of language, being branded a maverick, with full knowledge that a true maverick was not branded, ran free, belonged to no one.

The lore of the West is filled with tales of the lone trapper, explorer, miner who got uncomfortable when civilization got too close and moved on, preferring a lonely freedom to controlled comradery.

You can learn a lot be examining three politicians who were either labeled as mavericks by others or who have consciously sought to position themselves as such.

At the top of any list of political mavericks, you would surely find Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey. It would almost seem that the term was invented to describe him. He is now most well known for three things: helping to draft the Endangered Species Act, being one of the co-chairs of the first Earth Day and being the first member of Congress to call for Nixon to step down as Watergate unfolded around him.

Still, the manner in which he did these things indicates that his acts were those which arose out of an innate sense of what was truly the right thing to do. His decisions often followed long periods of worrying a subject but often came very quickly and once the rationale clicked into place, were followed by almost immediate action in which he did not falter. Anyone writing about him now should take care to read Lou Cannon's The McCloskey Challenge if you can find a copy. It is amazing how a book that dealt with Pete's challenge to Nixon comes so close to defining the manner in which he took on Richard Pombo and, most recently, left the Republican Party after his family had been California Republicans since James Buchanan was president.

Then, there is John McCain. Like McCloskey, he is a veteran having had to learn to survive in unthinkable circumstances. McCain has taken care to brand himself as a maverick, from the first days of the straight talk express. He always seems to talk straight from the heart and seems to love taking on the power structure.

But, you get the sense that this is truly branding at work. There are just too many times when that talk that makes up his image and the things that he actually does just do not match. In particular, I was astounded to that McCain would spend such an effort to support Pombo, even though they agreed on almost nothing. When it is for the good of the party, when it is for McCain taking the next step up, principles do not matter as much and the self anointed maverick, McCain goes back to the herd.

Even McCain's old "Straight Talk America" web site in now just johnmccain.com.

The other example of the maverick is Dana Rohrabacher. Except, while consciously grooming the image of the maverick he has only succeed in making himself colorful, and a pale reflection of even McCain at that. The idea that the Congressman for Huntington Beach who actually surfs is about as colorful as it gets. Unfortunately that is about as colorful as Rohrabacher get also.

When this country needs serious discussion about our direction, we get feeble jokes. When we need to understand what our government is doing for us... or to us... we get a Congressman whose staff can't even keep his own web site up to date, or he hasn't made a vote since the summer of '05.

If we in the West love our mavericks, you just know that McCloskey is the real thing, that McCain is trying to be and that Rohrabacher is for the dude ranch.

Yes, Dana, We Do Care About the Changing Climate

Dana Rohrabacher may not believe that climate change is for real, but his constituents certainly do. Dozens upon dozens of people took time out of their busy weekend to show up at the Huntington Beach Pier yesterday to make a statement. They wanted to make the statement that Orange County does care about the climate, and both individuals and local governments need to take action to stop the coming climate catastrophe.

So how well did the message get out yesterday? Let me tell you all about it down below...



Yesterday, local activists from the Orange County Interfaith Coalition for the Environment and Democracy for America-Orange County headed down to the HB Pier to get everyone at the beach to pay attention to what's happening with our climate. And they wanted to get Congress to pay attention to all this local demand for action, and to actually take action and agree to an eighty percent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. And they wanted local elected officials to pay attention, and to begin taking action in local government to reduce Orange County's carbon footprint. And yes, they wanted to get everyone else in the community to pay attention, and to begin taking action at home and at work to reduce every one's individual carbon footprint. So who was paying attention, other than me and all the other eco-conscious citizens who gathered at the pier?





Well, Gil Coerper was certainly paying attention yesterday. But then again, why wouldn't he? The conveners presented the HB Mayor with an award for him and his fellow city councilmembers for their recent decision to sign on to the US Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement. "Surf City" is now the fifth OC city to do so, joining Laguna Beach, Aliso Viejo, Irvine, and Santa Ana on that distinguished list of cities taking action to stop the coming climate catastrophe.





So why isn't more action being taken? That's what we all had to ask. There are twenty-nine other cities in Orange County that haven't yet signed onto the Climate Protection Agreement. There are members of Congress here who still refuse to recognize that there's even a problem with our changing climate, including one from Huntington Beach who dismisses all of this as "dinosaur flatulence". And yes, there are still many thousands of people in OC who still don't understand just how serious this climate catastrophe is. That's what motivated so many people to come to Downtown HB yesterday to get more people to be aware of what's happening, and to begin taking real action.

Let's hope that all of us in OC get the message soon. : )